BEIJING -- Chinese officials are allowing a German journalist to return to Beijing after holding him in the central town of Chaohu on charges of carrying out reporting activities without permission, the reporter said on Wednesday. "I have my passport back...I have my tickets back," Juergen Kremb, Beijing correspondent for the German magazine Der Spiegel, said by telephone, adding that he would fly back to Beijing on tursday. Local police detained Kremb and his traveling companion Wei Xiaotao, brother of jailed dissident Wei Jingsheng, as they were lunching with relatives of the Wei family in the town of Bazhen in central Anhui province on Monday. "Juergen Kremb...was found carrying out unauthorized news reporting in Anhui without the prior application to and approval from the provincial foreign affairs office," China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Officials forced the two men to stay in a local hotel for two days and ordered them not to leave the town, Kremb said from Chaohu

. "The relevant local department interrogated him, criticized his wrongdoing and asked him to abide by Chinese laws and regulations," the ministry said. Kremb said he had refused to sign a confession because he had committed no offense. Wei Xiaotao would fly back to Beijing on the same flight, Kremb said. The German embassy had intervened on his behalf in Beijing, he said. Kremb said earlier he had wanted to visit the home town of the family of Wei Jingsheng, regarded as the father of China's beleaguered pro-democracy movement. Wei is serving the second year of a 14-year jail term for plotting to overthrow the government. Previously, he was jailed for 15 years from 1979. Chinese rules prohibit journalists from traveling outside Beijing to carry out reporting activities without permission from the local authorities. This month, Chinese authorities detained and deported to Pakistan a television team from the British Broadcasting Corporation after they were caught working

without permission in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang. (Reuters)